And totally cribbed from Feministing
I don't know if you peeps know about my undying love for the Muppet Show. I still get the theme song stuck in my head regularly. And Miss Piggy could easily be the foremother of fat acceptance and fun feminism (the girl can kick ass in pearls, high heels and satin gloves).
But this clip has another awesome feminist icon. Can I just say- I want the t-shirt she's wearing at the end, but in red and black.
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Friday, March 07, 2008
Every woman has an eating disorder
A little while ago a friend and I were comparing our high school eating disorders. I was an exercise addict. I worked out about four hours a day and lived on saltines, water and salads. I was also sick (bronchitis, pneumonia, etc) and injured (broken ankle, torn meniscus in both knees, torn hamstrings) for almost 4 years straight.
She was bulimic. I had wished I could be bulimic because I could have eaten whatever I wanted and not spent so many fucking hours of my life working out. She then told me about throwing up in her sleep. I don't want her eating disorder anymore.
But I do wonder, if we hadn't spent so much time starving ourselves, how much thinner would we be now? Every time I lose weight, I gain back double. If I had just been happy weighing 140 in high school instead of trying to starve myself down to 112, or been happy at 160 instead of trying to starve myself down to 130, or (you get the idea- it just goes on from there).
And then I read this article and had one of those moments when your head just fucking explodes with understanding. 1600 calories a day and 3 miles of walking is way more food and less exercise than I get when I diet. It's more like 1000 calories and 6 miles of walking, plus pilates, plus bellydancing, plus aerobics.
I have another friend who is freaking out because she went over the 300lb point. She's gorgeous and one of the kindest people on the planet. So she started weight watchers. I was not exactly supportive. Instead of doing the normal "good for you for trying to get healthy", I said "You know you're just going to gain back more later".
Last night, she and I went out for shopping and dinner. She has given up weight watchers for the moment, but I can tell that she is not yet there about being okay with herself. She wants to lose weight cause her knees hurt. I told her it might be a better idea to work on strengthening her calf and thigh muscles so there is less pressure on her knees to hold her up.
What I also need to do is send her this article, with this passage bolded and highlighted and written in shocking neon so there is no way she can miss it.
She was bulimic. I had wished I could be bulimic because I could have eaten whatever I wanted and not spent so many fucking hours of my life working out. She then told me about throwing up in her sleep. I don't want her eating disorder anymore.
But I do wonder, if we hadn't spent so much time starving ourselves, how much thinner would we be now? Every time I lose weight, I gain back double. If I had just been happy weighing 140 in high school instead of trying to starve myself down to 112, or been happy at 160 instead of trying to starve myself down to 130, or (you get the idea- it just goes on from there).
And then I read this article and had one of those moments when your head just fucking explodes with understanding. 1600 calories a day and 3 miles of walking is way more food and less exercise than I get when I diet. It's more like 1000 calories and 6 miles of walking, plus pilates, plus bellydancing, plus aerobics.
I have another friend who is freaking out because she went over the 300lb point. She's gorgeous and one of the kindest people on the planet. So she started weight watchers. I was not exactly supportive. Instead of doing the normal "good for you for trying to get healthy", I said "You know you're just going to gain back more later".
Last night, she and I went out for shopping and dinner. She has given up weight watchers for the moment, but I can tell that she is not yet there about being okay with herself. She wants to lose weight cause her knees hurt. I told her it might be a better idea to work on strengthening her calf and thigh muscles so there is less pressure on her knees to hold her up.
What I also need to do is send her this article, with this passage bolded and highlighted and written in shocking neon so there is no way she can miss it.
The extreme physical and mental effects Dr. Keys observed led to his famous quote: “Starved people cannot be taught democracy. To talk about the will of the people when you aren’t feeding them is perfect hogwash.” This was also what led early feminist activists to see dieting and weight concerns as a way to keep women preoccupied with food, filled with guilt and self-hatred, more easily influenced by others, and too mentally and physically exhausted to succeed professionally and politically.I had another discussion with a friend last weekend about size. She had been very fat when she was younger but is now a skinny little thing. She said she likes being small because she likes not taking up too much space. I say I like being large because I like being here, very here, undissmissably here. Gone is the teenage girl who tried to starve herself into disappearing. I like that I am not a little girl, that my size makes me more of a threat to guys than I was when I was starving and that I am not too mentally or physically exhausted to meet any challenge.
Thursday, March 06, 2008
New Theme song
Totally inspired by Little Ms.Randombabble in gmail chat. After listening to the lyrics I am pretty sure Freddy Mercury wrote this for me the year I was born (1975- coincidence? I think not)
She keeps moet et chandon
In her pretty cabinet
let them eat cake she says
Just like marie antoinette
A built-in remedy
For kruschev and kennedy
At anytime an invitation
You cant decline
Caviar and cigarettes
Well versed in etiquette
Extraordinarily nice
Chorus
Shes a killer queen
Gunpowder, gelatine
Dynamite with a laser beam
Guaranteed to blow your mind
Anytime
Recommended at the price
Insatiable an appetite
Wanna try?
To avoid complications
She never kept the same address
In conversation
She spoke just like a baroness
Met a man from china
Went down to geisha minah
Then again incidentally
If youre that way inclined
Perfume came naturally from paris
For cars she couldnt care less
Fastidious and precise
Chorus
Drop of a hat shes as willing as
Playful as a pussy cat
Then momentarily out of action
Temporarily out of gas
To absolutely drive you wild, wild..
Shes all out to get you
Chorus
Recommended at the price
Insatiable an appetite
Wanna try?
You wanna try...
Why B and I will someday rule the world
We are planning guerrilla attacks on hetero weddings. When the priest type person asks if anyone objects, we will stand up and say that "until gays can marry too, we object to all weddings".
I just want an excuse to drink vodka tonics for breakfast
One of the nice things about living in Seattle is that we are a medical research hub.
We also have several large international charities based here (Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, PATH, Mercy Core).
So I saw this article and immediately sent off an email telling them I want to volunteer. Part of it is the money (I'm not gonna sneeze at 2000 to stay in a hotel and get the what amounts to a bad case of the flu). But also, malaria is a major killer of children under 5. It's not a sexy disease. It's not a disease of wealthy countries. Without big charities like the Gates Foundation, there would be no research into a vaccine.
So if suffering with a weeks worth of chills, fever and aches means that little kids in Africa and Asia and South America will have a better shot at living to be grown ups, I'm down.
We also have several large international charities based here (Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, PATH, Mercy Core).
So I saw this article and immediately sent off an email telling them I want to volunteer. Part of it is the money (I'm not gonna sneeze at 2000 to stay in a hotel and get the what amounts to a bad case of the flu). But also, malaria is a major killer of children under 5. It's not a sexy disease. It's not a disease of wealthy countries. Without big charities like the Gates Foundation, there would be no research into a vaccine.
So if suffering with a weeks worth of chills, fever and aches means that little kids in Africa and Asia and South America will have a better shot at living to be grown ups, I'm down.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
More inappropriate conversations with children
After watching this commercial
I mused out loud "I wonder why boys are more likely to get struck by lighting than girls?"
To which the Kid replied "Maybe the penis acts like a lightning rod"
That, my friends, is definitive proof that the child is mine.
I mused out loud "I wonder why boys are more likely to get struck by lighting than girls?"
To which the Kid replied "Maybe the penis acts like a lightning rod"
That, my friends, is definitive proof that the child is mine.
Poverty is not a game for the faint hearted
Via Shakes comes the story of an over privileged doochenozzel who thought he would prove to the world that poor people really are poor because they are lazy and don't understand the value of hard work and savings.
Let's start with a few things the asswipe forgot on his way to playing poor.
1) He's a dude, a young, single white dude with no children. When looking at the census numbers, women between 18 & 64 with children are 30% more likely to be poor than a man in the exact same situation. Elderly women are are 2.7 times more likely to be poor than elderly men.
The numbers are even more disturbing when looking at race. Overall, 22% of Black men and 26% of Black women live in poverty. For whites, only 9.1% of white men are poor.
So before we even look at things like education, he starts out with a greater likelihood of being able to earn a living than virtually everybody else in the country.
But that's not all folks. He starts with a college education. Some of us (me, hello) have been working on a college education for about 12 years now because we do not have the funds to both support ourselves and attend school full time. Financial aid, for the poorest of us, barely covers tuition and books. It is not uncommon for students to work full time (or more) and attend school full time. And when that is the situation and somethings gotta give (like say your boss threatens to fire you because your class schedule is interfering with his work scheduling) it is usually school that goes first. An education is great but it's damn hard to get an education while homeless, so basic needs get met first. That's simple human psychology. I would love to introduce the doochnozzle to Maslov's pyramid, but since he already has a college education I am sure he knows about it.
So he's a young single white dude with an education. And he's healthy, in no small part due to the fact that he probably had things like health care and good dental work up until he decided playing at poverty was a solid plan. Do you know how many days of work I have missed because of an abscessed tooth? More than a week. If I had dental coverage I could get it root canaled and crowned, or even just pulled. But I don't have it. And neither do most people in poverty.
And let's not forget, it's not like he's really poor. He had a credit card with him for emergencies. He had a way out of awful anytime he chose. He could quit a job if his boss was a dick. Some of us don't have that option, especially poor women who are sexually harassed (oh that's another one I have experience with multiple time over). And if worse came to worse, say if he didn't have the money to pay his car insurance and it lapsed and he got pulled over and arrested for it, well he still has Mom and Dad and his credit card to bail him out.
Poverty means there is no out. There is no back up plan, there is no benevolent savior, there is no way to save for a rainy day when you're $300 in the hole every month for just basic living expenses. Poverty is awful because it is finite for the individual in it. The myth of the bootstrap is just that. The tokens of exceptionalism that are occasionally trotted out in front of us are no different from the Catholic church telling feudal peasants that if they were good they'd get rewarded in heaven. Poverty is not an individual disease, it is a cancer on the society that creates it. Only massive changes to that society will cure it.
So Mr. Doochnozzle, you start out with a shit ton of privilege and you end with no real knowledge of what poverty looks like.
Let's start with a few things the asswipe forgot on his way to playing poor.
1) He's a dude, a young, single white dude with no children. When looking at the census numbers, women between 18 & 64 with children are 30% more likely to be poor than a man in the exact same situation. Elderly women are are 2.7 times more likely to be poor than elderly men.
The numbers are even more disturbing when looking at race. Overall, 22% of Black men and 26% of Black women live in poverty. For whites, only 9.1% of white men are poor.
So before we even look at things like education, he starts out with a greater likelihood of being able to earn a living than virtually everybody else in the country.
But that's not all folks. He starts with a college education. Some of us (me, hello) have been working on a college education for about 12 years now because we do not have the funds to both support ourselves and attend school full time. Financial aid, for the poorest of us, barely covers tuition and books. It is not uncommon for students to work full time (or more) and attend school full time. And when that is the situation and somethings gotta give (like say your boss threatens to fire you because your class schedule is interfering with his work scheduling) it is usually school that goes first. An education is great but it's damn hard to get an education while homeless, so basic needs get met first. That's simple human psychology. I would love to introduce the doochnozzle to Maslov's pyramid, but since he already has a college education I am sure he knows about it.
So he's a young single white dude with an education. And he's healthy, in no small part due to the fact that he probably had things like health care and good dental work up until he decided playing at poverty was a solid plan. Do you know how many days of work I have missed because of an abscessed tooth? More than a week. If I had dental coverage I could get it root canaled and crowned, or even just pulled. But I don't have it. And neither do most people in poverty.
And let's not forget, it's not like he's really poor. He had a credit card with him for emergencies. He had a way out of awful anytime he chose. He could quit a job if his boss was a dick. Some of us don't have that option, especially poor women who are sexually harassed (oh that's another one I have experience with multiple time over). And if worse came to worse, say if he didn't have the money to pay his car insurance and it lapsed and he got pulled over and arrested for it, well he still has Mom and Dad and his credit card to bail him out.
Poverty means there is no out. There is no back up plan, there is no benevolent savior, there is no way to save for a rainy day when you're $300 in the hole every month for just basic living expenses. Poverty is awful because it is finite for the individual in it. The myth of the bootstrap is just that. The tokens of exceptionalism that are occasionally trotted out in front of us are no different from the Catholic church telling feudal peasants that if they were good they'd get rewarded in heaven. Poverty is not an individual disease, it is a cancer on the society that creates it. Only massive changes to that society will cure it.
So Mr. Doochnozzle, you start out with a shit ton of privilege and you end with no real knowledge of what poverty looks like.
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